Page 94 - Cool Britannia

Since then, it’s gone stratospheric, with Joanne breaking into the notoriously hard-to-crack US market, beating the stereotypes of her age and gender, and being watched by 17 million viewers as she played an angel-winged solo during Annie Lennox’s set at the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Concert. That same summer gave us Almost Always Never; a bar-raising third album that found Joanne dodging expectations, writing the songs her muse dictated, and diving in at the deep end with just her talent to keep her afoat. Recorded in Austin, Texas, these twelve cuts moved from the savage Les Paul solos following year, taking in gems like Bones and Kiss the Ground Goodbye, it turned out the press had a sweet tooth, with Classic Rock crowning it Blues Album of the Month and Guitarist noting “she plays with more attitude and fair than most – massive potential here”. Soon enough, the buzz was building, with Joanne both raising her profle supporting Black Country Communion, and honing her craft on 2010’s Diamonds in the Dirt. This second album was another step up, from the explosive lead breaks on Can’t Keep Living Like This to the heavier infuence of her adopted Detroit hometown on the crunching country-blues of Dead and Gone. Not bad, considering she had written the material in just two days and recorded it in less than a fortnight: “It’s the dreaded second album curse. You have ten years to do the frst one, and ten days to do the second!”a classic record, but also a skeleton key to every door in the industry. Having received a nomination for Best New Artist Debut at the auspicious British Blues Awards for White Sugar, Joanne scooped consecutive wins in the Best British Female Vocalist bracket at both the 2010/2011 events: a haul that cements her position, as Blues Matters put it, as “the new face of the blues.” By then, she was unstoppable, with Diamonds in the Dirt proving not only 94